Aton

Description

From Queen Games website: The whole of Egypt is in uproar – Akhnaton, who has just acceded to the throne, wants to ban the old deity Amon from the temples of the land. Aton is to be worshiped as the new God. But the priests of the land are not willing to give up their temples without resistance so the 4 largest temples are fiercely disputed. The players are adversaries and fight out this battle of the Gods between them. Both have the same starting position, but who will be able to make better use of his abilities and help his God to victory? Game Play This two-player, abstract strategy game with an ancient Egyptian theme provides multiple ways to victory. There are basically four ways to win: take control of an entire temple by occupying all of the squares in the temple with your counters, occupy all of the gold squares in all four temples, occupy all of the green squares in all four temples, or score 40 points. Each player is given a deck of 36 cards with values 1 to 4. At the beginning of each round, players will deal themselves 4 cards, then simultaneously assign each card to one of the four cartouches in front of them by placing it face down next to the cartouche. When both players have finished assigning their cards, players simultaneously turn over the card each placed on his first cartouche. The two cards are compared: if one is greater, the player with the higher card scores double the difference. Now both players turn over the card on their second cartouche. The card on the second cartouche does double duty: it determines which player will get to play his remaining cards first (the player with the lower number goes first), and how many of his opponents' stones he is allowed to remove. Players can remove 2 of their opponent's stones if they played a 4 on their second cartouche, 1 for a 3, and 0 for a 2. If a player played a 1 on his second cartouche, he must remove one of his own stones. If both players played the same number on their second cartouches, then look at the value of the card on their first cartouches. The player with the lower number will go first. If the first cartouches' cards also match, players play War: turning over cards from their deck until one of them has a lower number. That player will play his remaining cards first: revealing the cards on his third and fourth cartouches. The card on the third cartouche determines which temples the player is allowed to place stones in and which temples he can remove his opponent's stones from. A 4 allows activity in any or all of the four temples. A 3 in only the first three temples, a 2 in the first two temples, a 1 in only the first temple. The card on the fourth cartouche determines how many of his own stones he can place that round. The player then removes the appropriate number of his opponent's stones and places the appropriate number of his own stones. Any removed stones are placed in the Kingdom of the Dead. The other player now resolves his third and fourth cartouches to finish the round. If the Kingdom of the Dead is full at the end of the round, a scoring round is triggered. For the first temple: the player with the most stones in the 1st temple scores the difference of the number of stones he has in the temple and the number of stones his opponent has placed there. For the second temple: the player with the most stones scores 5 points. For the third temple: the player with the most stones scores 1 point for each stone in that temple. For the fourth temple: the player with the most stones in the temple gets 3 points for each stone he has on a blue square. The player with the most stones on gray squares scores 8 points. Players then score points for any stones on +1 and +2 squares respectively. If neither player reaches 40 points after the scoring round, play continues with another round of drawing 4 cards, assigning them to cartouches, etc. If at the end of her turn a player has met one of the winning conditions (filling an entire temple, occupying all of the gold squares, or occupying all of the green squares), the game ends with that player the victor.